Missing
by Tess84
Summary: Based on spoilers for the ep. Leaving Las Vegas. Grissom has gone to New York, but a development in the 'miniature murderer' case might make him return earlier than he planned. GSR. Rating's for safety. R&R.
1. Prologue

**AN: I do not own any part of CSI. I wanted to start posting this story before the episode tonight, since I need the "miniature murderer" still on the loose for my plot. This story takes place sometime in the future after "Post Mortem", based on rumours floating around for the episode "Leaving Las Vegas". I don't have a beta yet, so if anyone's interested, let me know. I hope you like the story.**

**Prologue**

Sighing, Sara turned the ignition off and leaned back against the seat for a moment. It had been a long shift; she had been called in early last night for a double at the Belagio, which meant that she hadn't been able to talk to Grissom since the previous morning. She had tried to call him on her way to the lab the night before, but he hadn't picked up. And now, because she had been forced to stay at the lab late to get results on DNA collected at the scene, she had missed his mid-morning call as well. Just great.

They usually talked twice a day. Since his first lecture started at nine, east coast time, and Sara was at the lab until at least six, most days until seven, he would call her at the eleven o'clock break he gave the students. Then she would call at some point during the evening, before heading for work.

Letting out another deep breath, Sara got out of the car and headed for the apartment building. Pressing the 'lock' button on the car key, she heard the doors lock behind her. Entering the building, she pushed her sunglasses onto her head to be able to see better. She was in luck, the elevator was waiting for her, so she quickly pressed the right button and leaned against the wall, closing her eyes as she travelled upwards.

Exiting the elevator, she pulled her keys from her pocket and quickly unlocked the door. Her eyes immediately went to the answering machine, and were met by blinking. She smiled to herself. At least she would get to hear his voice.

It had only been two months since he left for New York and NYU, and she had no idea how she was supposed to survive until he came back. She missed him more than she knew was possible, and every day was a little bit harder to get through. The fact that she had nobody that she could talk to didn't exactly help. She didn't want to bother Grissom with her childish feelings. Worst case scenario, he would be sympathetic and tell her that he missed her too, and that he would be home before she knew is. Best case (for her, anyway) he would cancel his remaining lectures and come home. But even then, she would be faced with knowing that she made him give up on something that he really wanted to do. So she said nothing.

More than once she had pondered coming clean to Catherine, the possibility to be able to talk to the other woman her biggest motivation. But she didn't want to tell anyone without talking to Grissom first, and then she was back at square one.

Quickly dropping her keys and cell phone on the table by the door, Sara crossed the living room and pressed the button to play messages.

"_You have two new messages_." The mechanical voice announced.

"_Hey, it's me. I missed your call earlier, so I just wanted to see if I could reach you. I guess you're at the lab already. Anyway, just wanted to hear your voice. I'll call tomorrow. Love you_."

Sara smiled as she pressed the delete button. A second later, the next message began.

"_Hey, honey, I guess I missed you again. You must be pulling a double."_

As she listened to the second message, Sara pulled the thin sweater she had been wearing off and went to close the blinds. She paused a moment, her eyes lost at the horizon, thoughts thousands of miles away.

"_I'll call your cell on my lunch break, just turn it off if you need to sleep."_ Like she would miss the opportunity to talk to him for a couple of hours of sleep. _"I have that dinner thing with the dean tonight, so I don't know when I'll be back, it may not be until late. If I don't pick up tonight, you know why."_

Sara smiled at his caring voice. Ever since they started their relationship several months earlier, he had always been very – at times almost too – considerate about her feelings and the way she would interpret his actions. It was sweet. He always consulted her before making any decisions, and she knew that he wouldn't have taken the position in New York if she had asked him not to. Closing the blinds, she turned and headed for the bedroom, stopping just outside the door to listen to the rest of the message.

"_OK, so I have to go. Eager minds waiting to learn and all that."_ He chuckled and Sara was glad, because it was obvious that he was enjoying teaching. Remembering she left her cell by the front door, she went to retrieve it so she wouldn't miss Grissom's call later. Checking that it was on, she turned to head back to the bedroom, but hadn't made it halfway through the living room when a hand grabbed her by the waist and a cloth was pressed against her mouth and nose. Before she had a chance to make a sound, everything went black.

"_I'll talk to you later. Love you."_


	2. 1 Gone

**AN: Here's the first chapter, I hope you like it. I still don't own them. Reviews are appreciated.**

**1 – Gone**

Grissom frowned as he listened to a cell phone ring across the country. After about a dozen rings, he accepted the fact that Sara was probably sleeping and had turned the sound off so he wouldn't wake her up when he called. Sighing, he hung up and put the phone back in his pocket. He hadn't talked to her since the morning before, and he missed her voice. He would just have to get home in time to call her before shift that evening.

"What's with the long face, Gil?" A British voice wondered.

Grissom looked up at the owner of the voice, his long time friend and, at the time, co-worker, James Griffith.

"I'm just unable to get a hold of a friend." He replied.

"A friend, huh?" James raised an inquisitive eyebrow and Grissom realized that he didn't have to pretend; there was nobody on this side of the country who would have a problem with his and Sara's relationship.

"Girlfriend, actually." He admitted.

"The loner Gil Grissom has a girlfriend?" James chuckled a little as he sat down opposite Grissom at the table. "Never thought I'd see the day."

"Hey!" Grissom tried to sound offended.

"Don't take it the wrong way, I just pictured you as a life-long bachelor." James defended himself.

"She's… special." Grissom tried to explain.

"She must be." James nodded. "If she's so special, how come she's not here with you?"

"I didn't ask her to come." Grissom stated, wondering for the thousandth time since he left Vegas if he had done the right thing in not asking Sara to come to New York with him.

"Ah. Well, there's always time to change one's mind." James winked at him in a knowing way, and Grissom realized that he might do just that. He knew Sara had a lot of vacation time saved up, she could take a month or two and come stay with him. Wanting to ask her right away, he hit speed dial one on his cell again, with no better luck than before.

"I'll just talk to her tonight." He thought out loud.

"You do that." James agreed. "I guess you're expected to attend the dinner as well?"

"I'm afraid so." Grissom confirmed.

"I'm sure we'll be able to sneak you away for a little while."

xxxxx

"OK, it's a slow night, we have a DB in Spring Valley and a robbery on the Strip, who wants what?" Catherine held the assignment slips in front of her.

"Me and Nick'll take the DB." Warrick snagged the slip before Greg had a chance.

"Guess that leaves me with the robbery." Greg stated. "And, apparently, without a partner."

"Sara's not here?" Catherine looked around the break room, noticing Sara's absence for the first time.

"Nope." Nick replied.

"Has she called in sick?" Catherine wondered, and the three men shook their heads.

"I called her about five minutes ago, she didn't pick up." Greg offered.

"Maybe she's just overslept?" Nick suggested, causing everyone to look at him with disbelief visible on their faces. "OK, not a very likely scenario, I know, but there's a first time for everything."

"She's probably just sick or something." Catherine concluded. "Tell you what, Greg, I'll take the robbery with you and we'll stop by Sara's, it's on the way."

"Sure thing, boss."

xxxxx

"Sara?" Greg called through the door a little later. They had been knocking for a good fifteen minutes without an answer.

"Try calling her again." Catherine suggested, and Greg pulled his cell from his pocket, dialling Sara's home number. They listened as the phone rang inside the apartment, one time, two, three… fifteen, sixteen. Greg hung up.

"I'll try her cell, maybe she had some important errand to run." Greg pressed the call button again and waited for the signals to go through. As he heard the first beep, the sound of Sara's cell phone was heard from the apartment.

"OK, that's it, I'm getting the super." Catherine announced, leaving Greg alone in the hallway. He let the phone ring for a while, hoping that Sara had just not heard her home phone for some reason. When Catherine came back with the super a few minutes later, he hung up.

"This the place?" The super, a man in his late thirties, asked, and Catherine nodded. He unlocked the door with the master key. "Just lock up when you leave." He said before walking back the way he came.

"What if she's just in the shower or something? She'll be pissed." Greg said in an unsure voice.

"What if she's not?" Catherine replied, opening the door.

"Good point." Greg followed Catherine into the apartment and closed the door behind him.

"Everything looks OK." Catherine started, looking around the hallway and living room. "Except…" She bent down, slipping on a latex glove from her pocket before retrieving the cell phone they had heard through the door from the floor. "Why would she leave this here?"

"Maybe it slipped out of her pocket?" Greg shrugged. "It doesn't have to mean anything."

"Her keys are here, too." Catherine noted. "But where is Sara?"

"I'll check here if you take the bedroom?" Greg suggested, and was relieved when Catherine nodded in agreement. There was something about being alone in Sara's bedroom without her permission that just felt wrong to him.

As Catherine left the living room, Greg started looking around, searching for something that would tell them where Sara might be. After a while, he noticed that the answering machine was blinking, and pressed the 'play' button.

"_You have one new message and one old message."_ A mechanical voice said before the actual message started.

"_Hey, honey, I guess I missed you again. You must be pulling a double."_ At the familiar voice, Greg's eyes widened in surprise. He hit the stop button, effectively cutting the man off.

"Catherine?"

xxxxx

Catherine opened the door to what she assumed was Sara's bedroom and peeked inside. Yup, she was right. Walking into the room, the first thing she noticed was that it was empty and that the bed had either been made or not slept in. The second thing she noticed was a box shaped something sitting on the desk that was placed against the opposite wall. Approaching it, she felt her heart begin to race as she realized what she was looking at.

Completely engrossed in her finding, she didn't hear Greg calling her until he was standing in the doorway.

"Catherine?"

"What?" Catherine looked up from the box that was a perfect replica, as far as she could tell, of Sara's living room.

"I think we need to call Grissom." Greg stated, making Catherine frown. What had he found that would make him come to that conclusion?

"Why?"

"Come on." Greg indicated for her to follow him, and they went back into the living room where Greg pressed the 'play' button on the answering machine. Catherine was completely caught off guard by Grissom's voice.

"_Hey, honey, I guess I missed you again. You must be pulling a double. I'll call your cell on my lunch break, just turn it off if you need to sleep. I have that dinner thing with the dean tonight, so I don't know when I'll be back, it may not be until late. If I don't pick up tonight, you know why. OK, so I have to go. Eager minds waiting to learn and all that. I'll talk to you later. Love you."_

There was a beep and the second message started.

"_Hey, I'm back from the dinner. It's only nine thirty here, you can't be at work already, unless there's something really big going on over there, in which case it would probably be all over the news. Call me if you get this before going into the lab, there's something I want to run by you. Love you."_

The silence was thick for a moment after a beep announced the end of the messages. Greg was the first to speak.

"Did you know that they were…?" Catherine looked up at his un-finished question, pure surprise visible on her face. "I guess not."

"Why wouldn't they tell us?" Catherine wondered, and Greg shrugged.

"Maybe they just wanted to keep it to themselves for a while." He suggested.

"Maybe." Catherine agreed. "I'm gonna call him, after I call Nick and Warrick over here. This is officially a crime scene. Swing and Days'll have to cover our other cases, I want all hands on this."

"What did you…?" Greg didn't finish the sentence, but Catherine realized where he was going when she saw the horror in his eyes.

"No, she's not…" She cut herself off, not wanting to put the word out there. "She's not here." She went with instead, and saw Greg relax. "You should check out what's on the desk in the bedroom, though."

With that, Catherine went outside to make the necessary calls, while Greg made his way to the bedroom.

At first he didn't notice anything odd, but then his gaze fell on the box on the desk. Hoping against hope that it wasn't what it looked like, he went to take a closer look.

Peeking into the box, he saw a miniature of the room he had just left. Everything was where it should be, including the tiny remote on the table and a dead plant in one of the windows. Even, Greg realized, the cell phone was where they had found it, on the floor in the hallway. Frowning, he poked it with a pen he found in his pocket, but it wouldn't move.

xxxxx

"Great, I'll see you in a little while." Catherine ended the call after Nick had assured her that he and Warrick would leave their crime scene as soon as the other CSIs that had been called in arrived. She had already called Ecklie, telling him about what was happening and, quite surprisingly, getting him to offer the help of the entire lab on Sara's case as well as the night shift's other cases. She only had one more call to make, and it was the one she dreaded the most. Taking a deep breath, she dialled Grissom's cell number.

"_Hello?"_ He answered in a slightly groggy voice after the fourth ring. He must have been asleep, which wasn't odd considering it was after midnight in Vegas.

"Hey Gil." Catherine greeted.

"_Catherine?"_ Grissom sounded confused. _"Do you realize what time it is here?"_

"Since it's a little after midnight here, I'm guessing around three am." Catherine half joked.

"_Exactly."_ Grissom replied. _"Why are you calling me?"_

"I need to know when you last talked to Sara."Catherine said. He was silent for a moment before responding.

"_What do you mean? I don't…"_

"Cut the crap, Gil, the cat's out of the bag." Catherine interrupted him. "Just tell me when you talked to her."

"_Yesterday morning, or I guess it would be the day before yesterday by now. Why?" _He was starting to sound worried.

"You haven't heard from her since?" Catherine insisted.

"_She called me last night, but I was out to dinner with a co-worker. She didn't pick up when I called later, or today when I called. What's going on?"_

"I think you might want to call the airport, get a ticket for the next flight." Catherine sighed.

"_Why? Damnit, tell me what's going on!"_

"Greg and I went over to Sara's place when she didn't show up for work tonight. She's not here." Catherine revealed.

"_Maybe she just went to the store or something." _Grissom suggested, reaching for any possible solution.

"Without her keys or her cell phone? When she was supposed to be at work?" Catherine paused before continuing. "There's something else too… I found a model of Sara's living room in her bedroom. It looks like it's the same guy."

"_But she's not… dead, is she?"_ For the first time in the many years they had known each other, Catherine heard fear in Grissom's voice.

"The model is just of her living room, empty, so I think he's trying to tell us that he has her." Catherine reasoned. "But we're gonna need your help on this."

"_I'll be there as soon as I can get a flight."_ With that, he hung up the phone.

Catherine put her cell back in her pocket and went into the apartment again. She had decided to take the model back to the lab for a more thorough search, but she didn't want to leave before Nick and Warrick got there.

"Did you get a hold of him?" Greg asked as she re-entered the bedroom, looking up from the model he had been examining.

"Yeah, he's getting a flight out here as soon as possible." Catherine replied.

"How did he sound?" Greg wondered.

"I've never heard him so… scared." Catherine stated. "Not even when Nick was taken."

"This must be harder for him." Greg reasoned.

"Yeah." Catherine agreed. "Anyway, he talked to her yesterday morning, and she called him last night, which doesn't really give us much. She didn't pick up when he called this morning, I'm not sure when. But she must have been at the lab still, since she had listened to the first message. Do you know when she left?"

"No, but she was still there when I left at eight." Greg said, returning his attention to the model.

"So she would be home at eight thirty, at the earliest." Catherine thought out loud. "That possibly gives the kidnapper a fifteen hour head-start."

"Hey, Cath, look at this." Greg indicated the model, and Catherine bent down to get a closer look. "We can assume that the guy has been watching Sara for some time, and he must have gotten a copy of her keys at some point to be able to make this… thing."

"Right…" Catherine wondered where Greg was going.

"But he must have stayed **after** he attacked Sara." Greg poked the tiny model of a cell phone lying on the floor in the hallway. "It's glued stuck. I think Sara dropped it when he grabbed her. The keys are also glued to the table where you found them. Why go to all this trouble?"

"He stayed behind at the first scene too, but with the Penny Gardner case, he took the model with him to fix it and returned it later." Catherine pondered. "He must have known that he had the time to fix this, that nobody would miss Sara until shift started."

"What about Grissom? How could he know that he wouldn't raise the alarm when he couldn't get a hold of Sara?" Greg wondered.

"He must have heard the message!" Catherine exclaimed. "He heard Gil saying that if she didn't want to get woken up, to turn off the cell. He knew Gil would just assume Sara was asleep."

"Does that tell us anything?" Greg looked like a big question mark.

"It tells us that she was probably taken almost as soon as she got home from the lab, he might even have been waiting for her. If we only knew when that was…"

"Maybe Nick or Warrick will know." Greg suggested.

"Yeah, maybe."

xxxxx

As Sara slowly regained consciousness, she became aware of a throbbing pain in her head and the fact that she was lying on a very hard excuse for a mattress, which didn't exactly help the sore muscles in the rest of her body. Wincing, she opened her eyes, finding her surroundings completely dark.

Where was she?

Trying to remember what had happened, she realized that her mind was one big blur. She had stayed late at the lab, it had been almost nine before she had left. She had gone home, listened to Grissom's messages and then… everything was fuzzy.

Slowly, she got into a kneeling position before standing completely up. She reached out, and found a wall with one hand. Concrete. Following it, she made her way around a room which she estimated to be roughly nine by nine feet. The walls were bare and there didn't appear to be any windows. She found a door that seemed to be made of solid steal, because the only thing she got from banging her fists against it was sore hands. Doing a similar search of the floor, she located an empty bucket. She didn't want to think about what it was for. The absence of windows, the concrete walls and the somewhat cool air made her draw the conclusion that she was underground.

What the hell had happened?


	3. 2 Crazy

**AN: I am sooo sorry about the delay in updates. First I was real busy with work and school and stuff, and then my beta was busy, so it took a while. I hope you're still sticking with me! Don't own them, and reviews are always appreciated.**

**2 – Crazy**

"Hey guys." Catherine acknowledged as Nick and Warrick entered Sara's apartment.

"Hey, where do you want us?" Warrick asked, a serious look on his face. They were all reminded of Nick's abduction and Catherine could only hope that this would have as good an outcome – that they would find Sara before it was too late.

"I'm taking this back to the lab to do a closer examination." Catherine indicated the model. "I want you three to turn this place inside out and upside down. If there's a clue, we will find it."

"You got it." Nick nodded, and Catherine left the guys alone in the apartment.

"What have you done already?" Warrick asked Greg.

"Not much, really." Greg shrugged. "I've done a quick search of this room, Catherine was going to do the bedroom, but then she found the model…" He didn't have to say more. "That's when she called you guys in. The entire lab is going to help us with other cases, and Grissom's flying in as soon as he can get a flight."

"Griss is coming back?" Nick asked, frowning. "I thought he'd be busy in the Big Apple."

"It's one of his CSIs, man." Warrick said.

"I'm not saying we won't need his help, but why the rush? Doesn't he trust us to do our jobs?"

"Uh, guys, there's something else that I should probably tell you." Greg revealed. "That's not why he's flying back. I'm not even sure he's going to be working on the case."

"Then why… Oh!" Warrick realized what Greg was getting at.

"I knew it!" Nick exclaimed.

"No you didn't." Warrick told him.

"There was something off between those two for months before Griss left, I just figured they were fighting again." Nick replied.

"Looks like it was quite the opposite." Warrick noted with a smirk.

"Guys! Can we get to work?" Greg cut into the conversation. Nick and Warrick got serious again.

"I'll take the kitchen, you guys fight over the living room." Nick stated, heading for the room he had claimed.

"I think you should do the bedroom." Greg quickly suggested.

"Why?" Warrick questioned.

"You're married, you're used to having… girlie things around." Greg reasoned. "Plus, I don't want to be going through Sara's underwear."

"Fine, but I find anything nasty and I'm dragging your sorry ass in there!" Warrick took off to the bedroom and Greg got started on processing the living room.

xxxxx

Grissom took a break from pacing the waiting area at JFK and sat down in one of the plastic airport seats by the wall. He had been able to get a ticket for the first flight, leaving at 6 am, but it felt like a lifetime away. Burying his head in his hands, he exhaled deeply.

What if they didn't find her? What if she was already dead? He couldn't lose her, not now that he had finally found her.

Pushing the disturbing thoughts out of his head, he pulled his cell from his pocket. He had to tell someone he was leaving New York. Checking his watch, he realized that there was only one person on campus awake at the moment. James, the incurable insomniac.

"_Griffith."_ He answered after the second ring.

"James, it's Gil." Grissom greeted.

"_Gil, my friend, you're up early." _James noted.

"That's actually why I'm calling." Grissom said. "I'm at the airport, I'm going to Vegas in about an hour."

"_What happened?"_ James wondered, concern evident in his voice.

"I had a call earlier from a friend and co-worker at the lab." Grissom started, not sure how to explain what was going on. "She told me that my girlfriend is missing, probably kidnapped by a killer we had been chasing for months when I left."

"_Oh dear."_ Was James' only reply.

"I would have called the dean, but I doubt he would appreciate being woken up at this time." Grissom continued.

"_You don't have to say anything else." _James assured him. _"I will handle the dean, you just go get your girl back."_

"Thank you, James." Grissom said before hanging up. He just hoped he would.

xxxxx

Catherine carefully placed the model of Sara's living room on the table in her office.

"Where to start?" She mumbled to herself as she retrieved the small video camera device Grissom had used to examine the previous models and plugged it in. When the picture appeared on the screen, she lowered the camera into the model, searching for something to lead them in the right direction.

After almost an hour, she had still not found anything useful. There were no finger prints anywhere to be found, and nothing else that could possibly give them an ID of the perp. She had found a tiny photo of a bloody doll, similar to the ones that had been found in the other two models, but she had no idea what it meant. Sighing, she dropped the camera, which landed on the floor of the miniature. Leaning back in the chair, she reached for her cell phone when something on the screen caught her eye.

"What is that?" She asked herself as she grabbed the camera again, sliding it further under the miniature couch. There appeared to be a rag or rumpled piece of paper under the couch.

Finding a pair of tweezers, she reached into the miniature, only hoping the item under the couch was not glued like everything else. Surprisingly, it wasn't, and Catherine retrieved it with the tweezers.

Dropping the small item in a plastic evidence bag, Catherine looked closer at it. It appeared to be some sort of fabric, but she couldn't determine what kind just by looking at it.

Reaching for the phone again, she hit the call button.

"Nick, listen, I found something in the miniature. Have you looked under the couch?" She heard as Nick called the question to Greg.

"_He's looking now. What did you find?"_

"A small piece of fabric, looks like the miniature of a rag of some sort." Catherine explained.

"_Greg has something."_ Nick said, covering the microphone so he could talk to Greg._ "It's a rag, and it smells a lot like chloroform."_

"That must be how he subdued her." Catherine realized. "Have you found anything else that could help us in any way?"

"_We've dusted the entire place for prints, floor, walls and ceiling, Jaqcui will have a field day with this."_

"Let's just hope that at least one comes back as someone other than the obvious." Catherine said.

"_I know what you mean."_ Nick agreed. _"We haven't found any trace of blood, at least, that has to be good, right?"_

"Let's hope so." Catherine sighed.

"_Listen, I'm gonna get back to it." _Nick said. "W_e'll call you if we find anything, if not we'll be back in a couple of hours."_

"Same goes for me. See you later." Catherine hung up and was about to take another crack at the miniature, when there was a knock on the open door. She looked up to find Brass standing in the doorway.

"Hey, I heard about Sara." He said before sighing. "History seems to be repeating itself."

"Let's hope so." Catherine replied. When seeing the frown on Brass' face, she continued. "I mean the finding her part."

"Oh, of course." Brass nodded. "Have you got anything so far?"

"We have a lot of prints, all of which will probably come back as someone who had every right to be in that apartment." Catherine started. "We have a rag drenched in chloroform, a picture of another bloody doll, and this miniature, which is absolutely useless."

"Well, don't give up just yet." Brass told her. "If there's anything to find, our guys will find it."

"And if there isn't?" They looked at each other in silence, both imagining the worst case scenario. After a moment, Brass spoke.

"I have my guys knocking doors in Sara's building, but it's the middle of the day, not a lot of people are home." He said. "You'd think someone would have seen something, considering that he would have to carry a grown woman either into the elevator or down four flights of stairs."

"The guys are still over there." Catherine replied. "They won't leave until they are sure that they have everything that might be useful."

"Good, good." Brass nodded, before looking at the floor. "Has anyone called Gil?"

"You knew?" Catherine asked in an accusing voice.

"He didn't tell me, I just figured it out a while back." Brass explained. "So?"

"I called him about two hours ago, he's going to get a flight out here as soon as possible." Catherine said.

"Good. He should be here." Brass nodded.

"So… how did you figure it out?" Catherine wondered, but Brass only smiled.

"Don't you have a miniature to get back to?" With that, he walked away from the office.

"I'll find out, sooner or later, you just wait." Catherine mumbled as she turned her attention back to the miniature, hoping against hope that she would discover something she'd missed the first time around.

xxxxx

"This is useless." Nick complained, coming into the living room several hours later. "This guy is like Houdini or something."

"Houdini broke out of difficult entrapments, this guy is just good at not leaving any evidence." Greg mumbled from where he was lying on the floor, examining the rug up close and personal.

"Whatever." Nick sighed. "Anything?"

"Nope. Nada, zilch, gesundheit." Greg got up from the floor.

"That's bless you in German." Warrick noted, coming out of the bedroom.

"I know." Greg covered, quickly turning away to gather his kit. "Anyway, there's nothing here."

"I'll have to agree with you." Warrick frowned. "This guy is good. Too good."

"We'll just have to be better then, won't we?" Nick stated.

xxxxx

"Well, well, she's awake." Sara looked up at the voice, but didn't see anyone. Suddenly, the entire room was flooded in the light from a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was too high for her to have reached during her earlier explorations. Then the door opened, revealing a man in his forties pointing a gun at her.

"I thought it would be rude to sleep through this whole experience." She retorted dryly, and the man chuckled.

"Aren't you a feisty one?" He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. "Don't you try anything."

"Wouldn't dream of it." She rolled her eyes.

"Thatta girl." The man leaned against the wall next to the door and watched her for a moment. "I trust you've found your accommodations satisfactory?"

"Sure, I've always wanted a rock hard mattress and a bucket all to myself." Sara replied sarcastically.

"Now, now, none of that. A little respect, if you may."

"Respect? You kidnap me, lock me in this… this pit, and you expect me to show you respect? Go to hell!" It was all Sara could do not to spit on the man, but considering he was the one with the gun, she managed to contain herself.

"Well, when you put it that way…" The man seemed to be contemplating what she had just said.

"What do you want, anyway? What did I ever do to you?" Sara had been racking her brain to try to come up with the person who had done this. Granted, she had pissed more than her share of people off during the years, but she had absolutely no idea who this guy was.

"Oh, this has nothing to do with you." The man said in a light tone.

"Then what the hell am I doing here?"

"Well, I tried subtlety, but it obviously didn't work." He offered as an explanation. "And when he left town, I had to do something to get him to come back. You were just there."

"What do you mean?" Sara felt the wheels turning in her head. Was he talking about Grissom?

"Your little boyfriend, of course." The man chuckled, as if he had said something funny.

"What about him?"

"I've waited a long time to get my revenge." The man seemed lost somewhere in the past for a moment. "When he didn't get my hints, I had to do something about it. You're merely a tool to get what I really want – him."

"Then why don't you just let me go?" Sara suggested against hope.

"I can't do that, now can I? He has to know what it's like to loose someone, what it's like to lie awake at night wondering what's happening to the person he loves. Don't you think so? And don't worry, I will kill you if he doesn't find you in time. Actually, I might kill you anyway, make him watch you die before I kill him too." A primal laugh bubbled in the man's throat, and Sara unconsciously moved a little further away from him.

This man was definitely crazy.


	4. 3 Exhausted

**3 – Exhausted**

"_Please fasten your seat belts and place your tables in an upright position, we are about to land in Las Vegas."_ Was heard through the speakers, and Grissom put his seat belt on. They were finally landing.

He was sure the flight attendants were glad to see him leave. He had been rude the entire flight, snapping at people left and right. It wasn't his intention, but he was just so desperate to get home that he didn't consider how his behaviour affected other people.

As soon as the 'Fasten your seat belts' sign had been turned off, he was out of his seat and pushed past his fellow passengers to get off the plane. He had to wait for a moment before the exit was opened, but the second it was, he practically ran into the terminal. He didn't have any luggage, so he just headed straight through McCarran International and flagged down a cab on the street.

Half an hour later, he handed the driver a few bills and got out of the cab in front of the lab. Desperate to find out what had happened since he spoke to Catherine, he rushed into the lab and down the corridor until he was standing in front of his old office, which currently was inhabited by the very person he was looking for.

"Anything?" He asked breathlessly as he walked through the open door.

"Hey." Catherine offered him a sympathetic smile. "Was your flight OK?"

"It was fine, tell me what's going on." He insisted, leaning against the desk in what, to anyone else, would have appeared as a threatening position. But Catherine knew better.

"What we have can be listed on a single piece of paper." She sighed before continuing. "This model…" She indicated the model on the desk between them. "Is absolutely useless. We have no prints, no DNA, nothing to link us to him. We have a picture of a doll, which didn't help us before, and a tiny cloth drenched in chloroform."

"What about Sara's place?"

"All we've found is the larger version of the rag with chloroform he must have used to subdue her." Catherine could see Grissom wince at her choice of words. "The boys are still there, but they've checked every inch of that apartment, Gil. Nothing. We'll run the prints as soon as they get back, but I'm pretty sure there won't be any unknown. Jim's guys are going door to door, but so far nothing."

"Then we have to focus on what we already have." Grissom said, going into CSI mode. "The other models, have you looked at them again?"

"I was just about to get them from evidence." Catherine replied, getting up from the chair. "Care to join me?"

xxxxx

"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty." Sara jumped awake at the words whispered into her ear.

She had tried not to fall asleep, she really had, but whatever he had used to knock her out must still be in her system. She wasn't sure how long she had been asleep.

"Sweet dreams?" 'Dick' asked. She had christened him Dick in her mind, since the procedure made her feel like she at least had some control over the situation. Plus, she hated the name.

"Not like I'm gonna tell you about it." She grumbled, pulling herself into an upright position and, in the process, moving away from him a little.

"Well, I didn't really care." His voice turned cold. "I need to do something that you won't like, but if you don't let me, I'll just kill you right away. Got it?"

"Fine." Sara relized there was no use in arguing. "What do you want?" She asked.

"I need some of your blood." He replied, holding up a syringe. "It'll only hurt for a moment."

It was obvious that he had no idea how to draw blood, and Sara only hoped that he hadn't accidentally inserted a fatal bubble of air in her veins. Though that would probably be a better way to die than what he had planned for her.

"There, all done." He smiled as he withdrew the needle. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"What are you gonna do with it?" Sara wanted to know, and 'Dick' frowned for a moment, seemingly deep in thought.

"Well, I guess it doesn't matter if I tell you." He concluded. "I'm going to send your boyfriend and those friends of yours a little message."

"What kind of message?" She wondered.

"The scene of your death." He told her, standing up to leave. It finally dawned on Sara.

"It's you! You're the model murderer!" She exclaimed, and he gave her an appreciative nod.

"I'm impressed. I thought it would take you longer to figure out." He noted. "Not that it matters. What matters is if **they** figure it out."

"Why?" Sara asked before he closed the door. "Why Izzy Delancy, why Penny Gardner. And why me?"

"Oh, they had nothing to do with it. Just random. You, on the other hand, now that's personal."

"I thought you said it had nothing to do with me?" Sara frowned.

"It doesn't."

xxxxx

They had been looking at the model from the Penny Gardner case for almost half an hour when Warrick entered the room.

"Everything's in Trace, what do you need us to do?" He asked before noticing Grissom. "Grissom, man, it's good to have you back. I mean, not…"

"I know, Warrick, it's OK." Grissom interrupted, not wanting to be reminded of the situation. As long as he stayed focused on the evidence in front of him, he was fine.

"Why don't you and the guys have a look at the miniature too?" Catherine suggested. "I've been over it from every possible angle, but maybe you can find something I've missed."

"I doubt that, but it's worth a try." Warrick agreed. He got the model from the table. "Good luck with that, I'll let you know if we find anything."

"Thanks, Warrick." Catherine acknowledged as he left the room. A moment later, they were interrupted again.

"You look busy." They both looked up at Brass' voice. "Gil, good to see you."

"You too." Grissom nodded. "Door knocking turn up anything?"

"An old lady who claims she saw a purple – not pink, mind you, because that would be crazy talk – elephant climbing the fire escape." Brass said dryly. "She appears to have been the only one in the building at the time, and she's more than a little loopy."

"Damn it." Grissom leaned his head in his hands for a moment. "We need something."

"We'll get it." Brass assured him.

"Catherine? There's a package for you at the reception." Wendy peeked into the room.

"I'll be right back." Catherine told the men as she left the office.

"How're you holding up?" Brass asked when she was gone.

"I guess Catherine told you?" Grissom assumed, rubbing his tired eyes.

"Well, yes, but she didn't have to." Brass cocked his head to the side. "How long have we known each other?"

"Apparently too long." Grissom noted. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Why didn't you?" Brass countered.

"I just wanted to keep it between the two of us for a while." Grissom stated. "I didn't want everyone poking around, asking questions. She wanted to go public, though. Maybe if I hadn't been so stubborn, she wouldn't be…"

"Oh no." Brass interrupted him. "Don't you go there."

"Why not?" Grissom wondered. "If I hadn't been so stubborn about not telling people, we may not be in this situation."

"And how would telling people change anything?" Brass questioned. "Would you not have gone to New York?"

"Well, of course I would, but…"

"No buts. You would still have been in New York yesterday morning, and this sick SOB still would have taken her. End of story."

"Thanks." Grissom offered his friend a small smile.

"Anytime, buddy." Brass nodded.

"Hey, guys. You need to come look at this." Catherine was standing in the doorway, an unreadable expression in her face.

"What is it?" Brass wondered, frowning as they followed her down the corridor and into the break room. "We've already seen the models." He stated as he spotted the box on the table.

"This is a new one." Catherine told him, and both Grissom and Brass took a step closer. Nick, Warrick and Greg, who had been examining the model, stepped back.

Inside the box was a model of what appeared to be a basement of some sorts. There were no windows, only a door linking the room with the outside world. The floor and walls were grey, and the only thing on the floor was a model of a mattress and a tiny bucket. On the mattress was a bloody doll with brown hair.

"Sara." Grissom's voice was hardly a whisper as he realized what he was looking at. The doll had blood everywhere, but he couldn't tell where it was supposed to come from. Not that it mattered, he knew what it meant. She was dead.

Rushing out of the room, he barely made it into the men's room before the contents in his stomach made a re-appearance.

xxxxx

"Is he OK?" Greg wondered as Grissom left the room. Catherine only gave him a look.

"Damn it!" Brass exclaimed. "Why would he take her just to kill her right away?"

"I don't think he did…" Nick started, getting a magnifier from his kit before leaning in to look more closely at the wall of the miniature. "Look at this." He handed the magnifier to Warrick.

"She's still alive." Warrick concluded, giving the magnifier to Catherine so she could see what they were looking at.

"How can you tell that by looking at a doll?" Brass wondered. "It's not like it's breathing or anything."

"Oh, no, the doll's definitely dead." Catherine told him. "But Sara's not, at least not yet." Grabbing a pair of tweezers from Nick's kit, she retrieved something from the wall of the miniature. "See?" She put the item in a plastic evidence bag before holding it up, offering Brass the magnifier.

It was a small replica of a calendar, with the date April 9th circled.

"April 9th." Brass mumbled. "Today's only March 19th."

"He's telling us that we have three weeks to find her, or he'll kill her."

xxxxx

Rinsing his mouth with water before spitting it out in the sink, Grissom stared at himself in the mirror.

She couldn't be dead. He would know, wouldn't he? He would be able to feel that her spirit wasn't in this world anymore. Clinging to that thought for only a moment, he sighed. Through the years, he had met more than one grieving relative who insisted that their loved one couldn't possibly be dead, because they would know. More often than not, they were wrong.

What was he supposed to do without her?

"Gil, you in there?" He heard Brass' voice from outside. Not wanting to face his friend just yet, he remained quiet, hoping Jim would go away. But no such luck. "Look, it wasn't what it looked like. She's still alive."

At Brass' words, Grissom threw the door open, almost knocking the cop over.

"What do you mean?" He demanded.

"Nick found this miniature calendar on the wall, had April 9th circled." Brass explained.

"So he's letting us know that he hasn't killed her yet, but he's going to." Grissom pondered. "What kind of sick person are we dealing with?"

"Beats me." Brass shrugged. "But we better figure it out fast, or Sara won't stand a chance."

xxxxx

Over thirty hours later, they were back to square one.

The latest addition to their growing model collection had given them nothing new to work with, other than the fact that the blood in the miniature was Sara's. Which they had pretty much figured out before the sample was even sent to DNA.

The by now well known picture of a bloody doll had been found on the back of the calendar, but they still couldn't figure out what it meant. Everyone were racking their brains for some connection – to someone they had put behind bars, or someone who had not been happy with their findings on a case, anyone related to anything concerning Sara. Nothing had so far raised any alarms.

Not that there weren't possible suspects. Catherine had pulled up every case Sara had worked since arriving in Las Vegas and she and Grissom were going through them one by one, checking if anyone had been released from prison in the past year. So far, they had gotten through a little more than half of the cases.

Nick and Warrick were currently making house calls to the ones who were not safely behind bars, checking alibis. Grissom had insisted that Greg handle all the work in the lab, claiming that he didn't trust anyone else. Greg hadn't objected, happy to be able to at least help a little. He was running prints through AFIS, but still hadn't found anything.

"Is it just me, or are we really getting nowhere?" Catherine wondered, dropping the file she had just been skimming on the table in the break room. Grissom looked up at her for a moment before reaching for another case folder.

"We have to keep going until we find something." He replied, opening the folder.

"What if there's nothing to find?" Catherine asked.

"There has to be, he must have a reason for taking her." Grissom stated.

"Maybe he doesn't. Maybe he just wanted to send a message to the LVPD or something, tell us to get off his back." Catherine reasoned.

"We were never on his back." Grissom flipped the folder shut. "We have absolutely nothing leading us nowhere."

"I'm just saying…"

"Plus, if he just wanted to send us a message, he would have killed her right away." Grissom interrupted her.

"I guess you're right." Catherine agreed after a moment of silence. It did make sense.

"Now that we've established that, will you keep looking?"

Catherine chose not to comment on the fact that he wasn't her boss at the moment and that he couldn't give her orders due to the situation. She knew he was under a lot of pressure.

They kept going through file after file for over three hours when Catherine suddenly slammed the file she'd been reading down on the table.

"What is it? Did you find something?" Grissom looked up with hope in his eyes.

"No, but I have a theory." Catherine explained. "What if this has nothing to do with Sara?"

"Then why would he take her? No, I think…"

"Hear me out." Catherine cut him off. "What if this vendetta, or whatever it is he's got going, is about you?"

"No." Grissom brushed her theory off, returning to the folder in front of him.

"Look, Gil, I'm not trying to put any blame on you, I'm just saying look at the evidence." Catherine insisted. "If he wanted to get back at Sara for putting him away or whatever, wouldn't he be focused on making her pay? Now, he seems to be more interested in letting us know that it is up to us to find her. Up to you to find her."

Grissom was quiet for a moment, contemplating Catherine's theory.

"You could be right." He admitted after a couple of minutes.

"Told you." Catherine said with a triumphant smile on her face.

"You do realize this means more work, right?" Grissom raised an eyebrow. "I have maybe five times as many cases behind me as Sara."

"I knew there was a downside." Catherine grumbled. "But we can't really do much now. We've both been up way too long, we need some sleep. And so do the guys."

"I'll stay here, keep going through these." Grissom told her. "If I finish, I'll get started on my cases. You go home, get a couple of hours of sleep."

"No, you're leaving too." Catherine insisted. "Gil, you're no good to Sara if you pass out from exhaustion." He was quiet for a moment, eyes firmly planted on the file in front of him.

"In case you haven't noticed, I don't really have anywhere to go." He said quietly after a while. "My place's rented to that couple from LA until the end of June, and Sara's…" He didn't finish the sentence.

"Well, lucky for you, I have a very nice guest room." Catherine told him.

"Are you sure?" He asked.

"Of course." Catherine huffed. "I wouldn't let you wander the streets, and you can hardly sleep on the couch in here."

"And Lindsey won't mind?"

"Are you kidding? She loves you." Catherine assured him, gathering the folders before standing up.

"If you're sure…" He stood up too, taking some of the folders from her. "We should probably call Nick and Warrick, let them know they can take a break."

"We'll call from the car."

xxxxx

"You haven't eaten anything." 'Dick' noted as he entered the basement. Sara looked up at his words, not even trying to hide the disgust in her eyes.

He had brought her a glass of water and a couple of sandwiches half an hour earlier, but she wasn't planning on eating any of it. She was sure he had put something in it, trying to drug her again. No, thank you. She had every intention on remaining fully coherent so she wouldn't miss any possibility to escape.

Not that there had been any so far. Every time he came into the basement, he had the gun pointed at her. She wanted to get out of there, but she wasn't suicidal, and she knew he wouldn't hesitate to shoot her if she tried anything.

When she was by herself, she searched the room over and over again, looking for a way out. There was nothing. The door was locked from the outside, and she was pretty sure there was another door at the top of the stairs she had seen through the doorway. So no getting out that way.

The absence of windows had made her curious. What basement didn't have windows? Searching the walls more closely, he hands touching every inch of the concrete, she had found where he had bricked the windows shut before covering the surface with cement. No use even trying to get out through there.

That left pretty much nothing. All she could hope for was that someone would find her, and soon.

_Grissom._

Was he in Las Vegas? He would come back when someone called him to tell him what was going on, right? But would anyone do that? Nobody knew about their relationship, so why would they think to call him? He would probably find out when he talked to Catherine for the semi-weekly update on what was going on at the lab, but that could be days away.

What if he couldn't figure out who this lunatic was, and didn't find her in time?

Shrugging the depressing thoughts away, Sara realized that 'Dick' was still in the room, staring at her and waiting for her to say something.

"I don't intend to let you poison me." She spat.

"Oh, Sara, your words hurt me." He sighed. "Would I do that?"

"Oh, I have no doubt that you would." She replied.

"You're right, I probably would." He laughed coldly. "But not this time. Besides, you need to eat, or I won't have to kill you. Lack of food and water will take care of that." He turned to leave, letting the tray of food remain on the floor.

She knew he was right, but eating the food he had prepared for her felt wrong. As if he could read her thoughts, he looked over his shoulder before closing the door.

"You know I'm right."


	5. 4 Hopeless

**AN: Sorry for the delay in updates, I've been extremely busy and a little uninspired over the past month or so. Anyway, here's the next chapter, hope you enjoy it. Thanks to my beta for helping me out!**

**4 – Hopeless**

"Did you get any sleep?" Catherine asked, coming into the kitchen where Grissom was waiting for the coffee to get done.

"A couple of hours, I think." He replied, accepting the mug she handed him from the cupboard. "I'm not completely sure what was dreams and what was real, my mind kept running through the evidence while I was sleeping."

"I know what you mean." Catherine agreed, grabbing the now finished pot of coffee. "I swear, I've had miniature people dancing around in my brain all night."

"Yeah." Grissom nodded absentmindedly, staring out the window. The sun was about to set, and for a moment, he let his mind go blank.

"Hey." Catherine put a, what she hoped, comforting hand on his shoulder. He turned to look at her, and she realized she had never seen him so tired. "We're going to find her."

"I know." He replied, returning to his view. He had always loved the desert sunsets. "But what if we don't find her in time?"

Catherine didn't know what to respond to that, so she just kept her hand on his shoulder, hoping he knew that he wasn't alone.

"We should get back to the lab." He said after a few minutes, pulling away from her touch.

"Not before we have something to eat." Catherine replied, opening the fridge in search of something edible. Grissom sighed, but didn't argue as he sat down at the table. "OK, we have Chinese leftovers, pizza, or just plain sandwiches. Any preference?" She looked over her shoulder.

"Anything." Grissom shrugged, leaving the decision up to her.

"Chinese it is." She exclaimed, filling two plates with the food before sticking one of them in the micro wave. When the food was heated, she brought both plates to the table and joined Grissom. They ate in silence for a while.

"You can ask, you know." Grissom said after a moment. "I know you're bursting to find out."

"I just figured now wasn't the right time." Catherine replied, knowing what he was referring to. "I can contain myself, you know."

"Might take my mind off of things." He mumbled, pushing away the half-empty plate in front of him. Catherine watched him for a moment before speaking.

"So, how long has this been going on? Since Nick was taken?" That was the time she had suspected since she found out about the relationship. Nick's abduction had affected them all, in different ways.

"Yes and no." Grissom replied, causing Catherine to frown.

"Could you be a little vaguer?" She asked dryly.

"Nick getting taken was the final nail in the coffin, no pun intended." He offered a half smile. "But it really started long before that, years ago in sunny California. I just didn't realize it, or I didn't let myself realize it."

"I always knew there was something there, from the moment she stepped into the lab." Catherine noted, and Grissom nodded.

"At first, after the seminar, I kept telling myself that the age difference was too big a problem. Add that to the distance, you had a failure waiting to happen." He gave a small chuckle. "Then, she was here, and I still couldn't let myself be with her. She was still too young, but as the years went by, it didn't seem like such an issue anymore. I guess twenty to thirty-five seems a lot further apart than thirty-three to forty-eight."

"You've got a point there." Catherine nodded.

"Then there were little pushes along the way, each making me wonder if finally opening up and letting her in would be so bad after all." He gazed out the window for a moment before continuing. "The lab explosion, Debbie Marlin, Adam Trent…"

"The guy at the mental institution?" Catherine asked, and he nodded.

"And then when Nick got taken, all I could think was what if it was Sara in that box?" He looked a little guilty as he said the words, but Catherine understood. They had all had their nightmares during Nick's abduction. "I guess I just realized that I'd rather have her for just a moment, than not at all. Losing her would hurt as much no matter the nature of our relationship."

"It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Catherine said, using one of the few quotes she knew – and her favourite.

"Tennyson." He noted.

"If you say so." Catherine agreed.

xxxxx

"Hey, man." Nick acknowledged as he entered the lab where Greg had his eyes glued to one of the microscopes. "I thought we were all ordered to go home."

"I left, and now I'm back." Greg replied, completely engrossed in whatever it was he had under the microscope.

"Did you sleep?" Nick pressed on, slumping down in a chair across the table from Greg.

"A couple of hours."

"What are you working on?" Nick asked, leaning over the table to see what was under the microscope.

"I was just looking at the cloth we found, trying to find something that would lead us somewhere." Greg sighed and looked up. "Plain white cotton, about as un-traceable as it gets."

"We'll get something." Nick assured him, though he wasn't as sure as he had been forty-eight hours ago.

"I sent a sample of the chloroform to trace, but I'm not holding my breath." Greg rubbed his eyes, suddenly even more tired than when he left the lab hours earlier. "Nothing specific, could be bought in any chemical supply store in Nevada, or the country for that matter."

"Come on, man, don't be like that." Nick said, though inside he envied Greg for being able to say what had been on his own mind since they realized Sara was missing. But he had to keep up appearances, be his cheerful self. Keep the team's spirits at least a few inches above the ground.

"I know, I know… there's still hope, right?" Greg put on a smile, the mere ghost of the usual Sanders smile, and Nick knew he was right.

They had hope. But right now, that was pretty much all they had.

xxxxx

Sara jumped awake as the door slammed shut. Her eyes focused on her abductor, standing just a few steps away from where she was lying on the mattress. She sat up against the wall and challenged him with her eyes.

"Good morning." He said cheerfully, and she scowled at him.

"Is it morning? I hadn't noticed." She replied dryly.

"Now, I know you're not happy about being locked up down here, but I really can't let you out." He put on a sympathetic smile.

"How long are you going to keep me here?" Sara asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "Just a ballpark figure."

"For as long as it takes." He responded, leaning against the door. "As long as it takes." He repeated in a mumble, more to himself than her.

"As long as it takes for what?" Sara asked in an exasperate voice.

"For Mr. Grissom to find me, of course." He said, as if it was obvious.

"So you want him to find you?" Sara frowned.

"I want him to hurt the way he hurt me, but for that to happen, he needs to know what he's lost, doesn't he?" He looked at her, but his eyes seemed far away, maybe even in a different time.

"What did you lose?" Sara almost whispered, afraid to disturb the silence with too harsh words. He looked up as she spoke, and Sara was startled by the pain and loss she saw in his eyes.

"I guess I might as well tell you, you are involved in this after all." He sighed, running a hand through his hair. He was quiet for a moment, then continued. "They took her from me. Took everything from me. Ruined my life."

"Who did?" Sara asked, though she thought she already knew the answer.

"Your boyfriend!" He spat at her, the anger returning to his eyes. "It was his fault, everything was his fault."

"What did he do?"

"He didn't find her. And then… then it was too late, and he wouldn't help me, he just…" He let out a deep breath, not finishing the sentence.

"Who didn't he find?" Sara was running through case files in her mind, but nothing popped up. Maybe if she had a name…

"Kelly." He mumbled. "My baby… she was only six, and they… they…" A sob escaped his lips.

"Your daughter?" Sara wondered, and he nodded. "You must have loved her very much."

"She was my world, my everything." He sounded less like a killer now, and more like a grieving father. Sara knew all too well that there was a fine line between the two, though.

"Do you think she would have wanted you to do this?" She asked gently. "Do you think what you're doing would make Kelly proud of you?"

"Don't you dare say her name!" He yelled, crossing the floor in a few long strides. "You don't have the right to say her name! Shut up!" His fist descended on her, and then everything went black.

xxxxx

"Hey, guys, anything new?" Catherine asked as she and Grissom entered the break room where Greg, Nick and Warrick were gathered around the table.

"Nothing probative." Warrick replied, handing her a couple of papers. "Results on the chloroform, finger prints, and some other stuff. A bunch of nothing leading us nowhere."

"Aren't you the eternal optimist?" Catherine said sarcastically, flipping through the papers. Nothing, just like Warrick said. She could feel her spirit drop a little further. "Is there anything we might have missed?" She asked, looking expectantly at the others.

"Nothing." Nick shook his head. "We were about to get started on the old case files."

"Yeah, might as well get going." Catherine sighed. It was going to be a long day.

"I think I'll take another look at the models, I'll catch up with you in a while." Grissom said. "I've got this feeling that there's something I'm missing."

xxxxx

"There is nothing in here!" Greg exclaimed several hours later, as he closed another case file. They had gone through the rest of Sara's files and were now working on Grissom's, which would take a while, if the piles on the table were any indication.

"There's still a lot to go through." Catherine tried to reassure him. "We'll find something."

"We don't even know what we're looking for." Nick piped in. "We have no idea what set this guy off, it could have been anything."

"We still have to keep looking." Warrick said solemnly. "We'll know what we're looking for when we find it." He frowned. "I hope."

"Yeah, we can't just sit here and do nothing." Catherine continued. "This is Sara, remember. Do you think she would be complaining if it was one of us?"

They were silent for a moment, everyone contemplating Catherine's words. They all knew the answer to her rhetorical question.

"I know she wouldn't." Nick finally spoke up. "I might've never gotten out of that box if it wasn't for her, and you guys of course, so I'm not about to let her down now."

"Good." Catherine nodded, and they all turned their attention back to the files at hand.

xxxxx

Putting the model from Izzy Delancy's murder scene away after what felt like the thousandth time of examining it, Grissom sighed. There was something he was missing, he just knew it. Something lurking just out of reach in his mind.

If he could just figure out what it was.

Replacing the Izzy Delancy model with the one from Penny Gardner's case on the desk in front of him, he studied it for a moment before leaning back in the chair.

This really was hopeless.

He, and the rest of the team, had been over every inch of these models several times, he wouldn't find anything new.

Running a hand over his face, he closed his eyes for a moment. Opening them again, he spotted the enlarged images of the photos of the bloody dolls that had been found in the models.

Suddenly everything fell into place.

Standing up so fast that he almost knocked the chair over, he rushed to the fish board on the wall. Scanning the board, he found the reference to the case he was looking for and grabbed the note.

Half running down the corridor, he was oblivious to the people he barely avoided knocking over and their calls of concern after him. Barging into the break room, he came to a halt.

"I think I know who took her!" Everyone looked up at his exclamation.

"You do?" Greg's face lit up.

"I finally figured out what the picture of the bloody doll means." Grissom revealed. "It was a case I worked on, fifteen years ago, when I first started here at the lab. Mr. and Mrs. Nichols came home from a company dinner to find the babysitter asleep on the couch and their six-year-old daughter, Kelly, not in her bed. They thought she had been kidnapped, but there was no ransom, nothing to indicate it."

"What happened?" Catherine asked, sensing where the story was going but not wanting to jump the gun.

"We approached the case from all angles; any signs of previous abuse, anyone paying extra attention to the little girl outside the home, anything to indicate who might have taken her, but we found nothing." Grissom sat down on an empty chair. "I liked the father for it from the start, so I dug a little deeper. Turned out he had a prior for sexual assault, tried to rape his younger cousin when he was fourteen. It wasn't on record, since he was a minor, I only found out through a friend who handled the case. Needless to say, he wasn't happy it got out."

"Oh, man." Warrick mumbled.

"But we couldn't find anything to link him to the girl's disappearance." Grissom continued. "He had multiple witnesses placing him at the dinner at the time she vanished from the house. We looked closer at the babysitter as well, but she was the daughter of friends of the family and had watched the girl since she was a baby. I kept looking into the father, which of course he didn't like one bit."

"Where does the doll come in?" Nick wondered.

"I'm getting to that." Grissom ran a hand over his face. "Three weeks later, the girl was found dead a few miles from her home. She had been raped several times before her throat was slit, and in her hands she had her favourite toy, a doll. It was covered in her blood."

"Did you get the killer?" Catherine asked.

"No. We recovered semen, but it wasn't a match to the father or anyone else involved in the investigation. CODIS wasn't around back then, so the case went unsolved." Grissom concluded.

"So you think this… what's his name?" Greg asked.

"Joseph Nichols." Grissom replied, putting the note from the fish board on the table.

"You think he has her?" Greg continued.

"I think it's the only possibility I can see at the moment." Grissom sighed.

"Boys, we have a new mission." Catherine announced, grabbing the file. "I want everything there is to know about Joseph Nichols, credit report, last known address, everything. We meet back here in one hour."

xxxxx

Sara groaned as she slowly regained consciousness, her hand coming up to rub the spot on her left cheek that seemed to be radiating pain into the rest of her head. At least he hadn't broken the skin, though she could feel the bitter taste of blood in her mouth. Quickly running her tongue over her teeth, she found none missing. She had probably bit her cheek when he hit her.

At least she knew why she was here now. He wanted to get back at Grissom for, in his mind, not saving his daughter. She went over the facts she had been able to gather from his words, and came to the conclusion that the case must have been before her time, since she couldn't remember a six-year-old girl named Kelly being part of any investigation she had been involved in.

So where did that leave her?


	6. 5 One step forward

**AN: Well, here it is, finally – the next chapter! I am very sorry that I haven't updated in, well, a really long time. I could give you reasons, but the truth is that I've been unmotivated. I hope that I've managed to get started again, but I will not promise a quick update. The only thing I can promise is that I won't abandon my stories. I will try my best to at least finish the ones I have started.**

**As always, I don't own anything connected to the show. I hope some of you have stuck with me and that you will enjoy this chapter.**

**Last but not least, a big thank you to Kayla who helped me with this chapter!!**

**5 – One step forward**

The team was sitting around the table in the break room later that day. Grissom and Catherine had spent an hour digging into the case of Kelly Nichols, while Nick, Warrick and Greg had looked into Joseph Nichols' past and present life.

"What do we have?" Catherine enquired, looking around at the faces of her co-workers and friends.

"Joseph Nichols, age 46, born in Tonopah, Nevada to Beth and Jonathan Nichols. Parents died in a car accident when he was thirteen, and he went to live with his mother's sister, Joanne Kindley and her husband Ben." Nick started. "About a year after that, he raped his eleven-year-old cousin, Lisa Kindley, and was sent to a juvenile detention centre. He was released when he turned eighteen, and has stayed in line ever since. At least according to his records." Nick huffed. "Guy doesn't even have a speeding ticket."

"That doesn't mean anything, we need hard facts." Catherine told him.

"I know." Nick nodded, flipping through his papers. "After being released from the detention centre, he got his high school diploma and got accepted to UNLV where he studied…"

"Architecture." Grissom interrupted. "He was an architect."

"Right." Nick confirmed. "He got his Masters, and then got an internship with some firm… hang on… Morris & Jameson, where he later got a permanent position."

"Architect." Catherine gave Grissom a meaningful look. "He wouldn't have had a problem building these models."

"It's him." Warrick nodded.

"We all think so, but we still can't get ahead of ourselves." Catherine said. "What did you find out, Greg?"

"Well, he was still at Morris & Jameson when his daughter went missing, on, drum-roll please, March 18th in 91. Her body was found on April 9th. Coincidence? I don't think so." Greg paused, giving the other team members a moment to digest the fact.

"He took Sara on the same day that his own daughter disappeared." Nick said, shaking his head.

"It would appear so." Catherine nodded.

"Not only that, I know why he killed Izzy Delancy when he did." Greg continued. "August 10th was Kelly Nichol's birthday."

"This just keeps getting creepier and creepier." Warrick noted, and Nick nodded in agreement.

"Can we get back to the facts?" Catherine steered the conversation back to the case. "So he was at the architect firm when his daughter disappeared?"

"Yup, in fact, he had just been promoted to some high position, and that was the reason of the dinner party that he and his wife were at when Kelly was taken." Greg went back to the topic.

"Right, right, I remember." Grissom mumbled under his breath.

"Yeah, so he was on his way up." Greg noted. "Then the kid was found dead, and everyone was devastated, of course. When his wife found out about his previous… let's say 'mis-step'." Greg air quoted the word. "She left him. Filed for divorce in June of 91. Maybe she thought her husband was a little more involved in their daughter's death than she wanted to admit."

"That's not necessary the case, Greg." Grissom stated. "The percentage of relationships that end after the death of a child is remarkable. It could simply have been the toll of losing their daughter that caused their separation."

"I'm just saying." Greg shrugged. "Anyway, a few months later, in August, Nichols was fired from the architect firm. Apparently he had begun self-medicating." He made a motion to indicate drinking.

"So, in less than six months, he had lost his daughter, his wife, and his job?" Catherine summarized. "That can make anyone go nuts."

"Don't forget his house." Greg cut in. "The wife got the better part of the divorce settlement – the house, the car, the dog. He was pretty much left with the clothes on his back."

"So what did he do then?" Catherine asked. "He hasn't been unemployed since 91, has he?"

"Nope, actually not." Greg glanced at his papers. "He checked himself into a recovery center, spent some time there and came out sober. Joined AA, got a job as a janitor in an office building, rented a one bedroom apartment on Alexander, and has been quiet ever since."

"Up until seven months ago, August third, when he suddenly quit his job." Warrick took over.

"That was a week before Izzy Delancy was killed." Catherine shot Grissom a look, and he nodded.

"The day after, he closed all of his accounts, sold his car to a local used car dealer, and dropped the lease on his apartment. Nobody has heard from him since." Warrick concluded. "I've run his name through every conceivable data base, he has no property anywhere in the state of Nevada. Like I said, he cleaned out his accounts, which amounted to about two hundred thousand – and don't ask me where a janitor gets that kind of cash – so he'll be able to stay below the radar for a while."

"Brass is putting out an APB on Nichols as we speak." Catherine said. "Did you find anything that could help us figure out where he's taken her?"

"Nah." Warrick shook his head. "Like I said, he doesn't own property in the state of Nevada, I'm waiting to get the results on the rest of the country but it might take a while."

"Let us know when you do." Catherine told him.

"Will do." Warrick nodded.

"OK, so we've been going over the Kelly Nichols case again." Catherine pulled out some papers from the file in front of her. "There were numerous witnesses who placed both Nichols and his wife at the party the entire night; there really was no way they could have taken the girl."

"Did they have any enemies?" Nick asked, and Grissom shook his head.

"None that posed an actual threat." He replied. "There were the occasional arguments at work, the people who had been passed over when Nichols got promoted, but it didn't lead anywhere. We went over every detail of their lives, and still found nothing."

"Could they have hired someone?" Warrick speculated, and Grissom shrugged.

"In theory, I guess. But they didn't have the money for something like that, and there was no unusual activity on any of their accounts." He said.

"Then what?" Greg wondered.

"That pretty much leaves an attacker unknown by the family." Catherine stated. "The girl was taken at random."

"We investigated every known sex-offender in the area, but it didn't result in anything." Grissom said, and Catherine sighed.

"I actually ran the semen found on Kelly Nichols through CODIS." Nick revealed.

"Why?" Greg asked. "What difference does it make? He's not the one who has Sara."

"If we can find out who killed his daughter, we might be able to bargain with Nichols if he contacts us." Grissom answered in Nick's place. "We can offer him information about his daughter's murderer if he lets Sara go in exchange."

"Oh. OK." Greg nodded.

"Yeah, anyway." Nick pulled a piece of paper from the folder in front of him. "I got a name; Mark Holden, currently doing life at Nevada State Prison for raping and killing his five-year-old step-daughter in Reno four years ago. He was living in Vegas at the time of Kelly's abduction."

"I'll call Brass, get him to go out there and talk to him, maybe get a confession." Catherine left the room, pulling her cell phone from her pocket as she went.

"It won't do much good if he doesn't contact us." Greg said. "We need a way of getting in touch with him."

"Well, he has no known address, no listed phone number, so other than going door to door in the greater Las Vegas area, I'd say we're a little out of luck." Warrick noted dryly.

"Then we'll just have to hope that he contacts us." Grissom stated, and Greg frowned at him.

"Why would he do that?" He wondered.

"This is something personal for him, directed at me." Grissom reasoned. "If we don't give the media any info, he'll get frustrated and hopefully contact us to make sure we know it's him."

"Let's hope so." Nick sighed.

xxxxx

"Well, well, well. What can the country's finest want with me?" Mark Holden gave Brass a piercing look. "I'm already doing my time. What're you gonna do, lock me up some more?"

"I bet I could find a nice little isolation cell, just for you." Brass replied dryly. "How's that sound?"

"Actually sounds pretty nice." Holden said.

"Oh, right, I forgot. People who molest and kill children don't go over too well, even with other criminals." Brass shrugged. "That's just too bad for you, isn't it?"

"What d'you want?" Holden growled.

"Kelly Nichols, March 91." Brass pressed the picture of the little girl up against the glass separating him from Holden. "Ring any bells?"

"That was a long time ago, man." Holden avoided Brass' gaze. "You expect me to remember every kid I've seen?"

"No, I expect you to remember the one's you've killed."

"You ain't got nothing on me." Holden shook his head. "If you did, the cops'd have been banging my door in fifteen years ago."

"Oh, but you see, we have this new technique called DNA." Brass told him. "Ever heard of it?"

Holden went visibly pale, and started biting the nails on his left hand which, by the looks of the bloody fingertips, was a nervous habit.

"What do you want from me?" He asked after a while.

"I don't want anything from you, I've got everything I need." Brass shrugged. "Your DNA in little Kelly Nichols, and you can say hello to Mr. Lethal Injection." Brass hung up the phone they had been using to speak, and got up to leave. A banging on the glass stopped him, and he picked up the phone again.

"What if I sign a confession, then I'd get life, right?" Holden asked nervously.

"You've been watching too many cop shows, buddy. It doesn't work like that." Brass shook his head.

"Come on, man." Holden pleaded, and Brass sighed.

"You give me a confession, and I'll put in a good word for you." He said, pulling a white lie.

"Thanks, really appreciate it." Holden visibly relaxed.

"So you wanna tell me what happened?"

"It's like I said at the trial, I didn't want to take her, I had to do what the voices said." Holden explained, and Brass nodded.

Right. He had looked through the file before heading out here, and Holden had pleaded insanity, claiming that the voices in his head had told him to rape and kill his step-daughter. The jury, however, hadn't bought it and he had been sentenced to prison.

"Did the voices tell you to kill any other girls?" Brass wondered, and Holden was quiet for a moment.

"No." He finally replied.

"Why don't I believe you?" Brass huffed. "Your lawyer will be hearing from the DA, and trust me; I will re-open every single case involving little girls over the past twenty years, and if there's even one out there whose blood you have on your hands, you are going down for it."

xxxxx

"Hey, I just talked to Jim, he confessed." Catherine said, coming into the break room where Grissom was going through the Kelly Nichols file again.

"That's great." He replied, glancing at her briefly. "But, like Warrick said, it won't do us much good if we can't get in touch with Nichols."

"Look, I've said it before but I am saying it again; we will find her." Catherine promised. "But you have to stay at least a little optimistic, I can already feel the guys loosing hope, and frankly I can not pull this boat on my own."

"I'm sorry, I want to believe you, I do." Grissom sighed. "I guess I'm just afraid of getting my hopes up if she never…"

"I know." Catherine interrupted. "I get it, really. Just try to keep a little faith, OK?" He nodded, and Catherine left the room.

Grissom leaned his head in his hands for a minute, taking a couple of deep breaths before returning to the papers in front of him. He didn't think that he could get anything more out of them, but he needed to do something, or he'd go insane.

As he started reading the interrogation with Joseph Nichols for the fourth time that day, his phone started vibrating in his pocket and he pulled it out, looking at the screen. Hidden number.

"Grissom." He answered, his attention still on the file in front of him.

"_How does it feel not knowing where she is, how she's doing?"_ Grissom froze at the voice.

"Nichols." He breathed into the phone, and was rewarded with a laugh.

"_You figured it out. Can't say I'm impressed."_

"Where is she?" Grissom asked. He knew he should get up and leave the room, find someone who could put a trace on the call, but he was afraid to move and lose the man on the other end of the line.

"_Wouldn't you like to know? But that's my secret."_ Nichols gave another laugh, sounding more hysterical this time. _"We've been having a very nice time."_

"What do you want?" Grissom wondered.

"_What do I want? I want you to __SUFFER!"_ Nichols almost yelled. _"I want you to lay awake at night, wondering where she is, if she's even alive, that's what I want!"_

"What gives you the right to drag Sara into this?" Grissom tried to stay calm. "I'm the one who couldn't find your daughter, it's me you want."

"_I take it you got my message."_ Nichols ignored him. _"You know how long you have to find her; I suggest you use the time well."_

With that, he hung up the phone, effectively pulling Grissom out of the paralysis he had been in. He hurried out of the room and down the corridor to the AV lab, where he found Archie.

"I need you to trace the call I just got." He said breathlessly. "He just called me. Nichols."

Archie was already typing something into the computer in front of him.

"What number did he call from?"

"It was a hidden number, but you can still trace it, right?" Grissom asked nervously.

"Sure, I'll just go through your incoming calls and… there it is." He clicked on a number on the screen, and frowned. "It's a pre-paid phone card. Sorry."

"Can you see what cell phone tower he was closest to?"

"Yup, just hold on one second… he's somewhere downtown." Archie pointed at the screen. "The closest tower was the one off the Strip."

"Maybe he stays close to his hide-out." Grissom thought out loud. "We'll have to double the uniforms in the area and tell everyone to keep an eye out for him. Can you print the district we're talking about?"

"Sure." Archie hit a few more buttons and the printer started buzzing. Grissom grabbed the paper as soon as the printer was finished.

"Thanks." He was out the door before Archie had a chance to react. The young man shrugged, and turned back to the computer where he got to work on putting a trace on the pre-paid phone card, so that he would be alerted the moment the phone containing it was turned on.

xxxxx

Sara looked up as the light came on and the door opened. He looked more smug than usual as he entered the room and closed the door behind him, gun safely in his right hand.

"Good morning sunshine." He greeted her, and she settled for a smirk in return.

"What's got you all excited? Find someone else to kidnap and lock up in a dark basement?"

"As a matter of fact no." He seemed to ponder her words for a moment. "But now that you mention it, it might be fun."

"I think our definitions of 'fun' are a little different." Sara stated dryly.

"I guess so." He agreed. "No, I've just had a very interesting talk with your boyfriend."

"What? You talked to Grissom? Why?"

"I just wanted to make sure he knew who he was dealing with." He replied. "They have actually figured it out, if you're interested. Took them long enough."

"What did you tell him?" Sara asked cautiously, not wanting to sound too eager in case he'd take that as a reason not to tell her.

"I just made sure he knew that he had a limited time to find you, and told him to use his time well."

"What do you mean 'limited time'?" Sara asked, fear creeping into her veins. "Did you put it into your calendar, or something? March twentieth; pick up dry cleaning, kill Sara?"

"You'll find out in due time." He smirked at her before leaving the room. Sara sighed as she heard the lock.

"Damn it!"


	7. 6 Closing in

**AN: First of all, I want to apologize for not updating in a really, really long time. ****There is really no explanation, other than the fact that I have been extremely un-motivated to write since Jorja left the show. I am not going to promise anything, other than the fact that I will TRY to finish my WIP… at some point. Thanks to everyone who are still reading, I always appreciate seeing the number of hits on a story go up (not to mention reviews – hint, hint). This story has not been beta'd, so all mistakes are mine. Oh, and I don't own anything regarding the show (except for the first 5 seasons on DVD)! On with the story!!**

**6 – Closing in**

"Whoa, you need to watch where you're going." Catherine's voice brought Grissom back to reality and he realized that he had nearly run her down on his way back to his old office. "Where's the fire?"

"He just called me." Grissom told her.

"Who? Nichols?" Catherine raised her eyebrows in a surprised look as Grissom nodded. "He actually called you?"

"Archie traced the call to the cell tower off the Strip, so he's somewhere downtown. I was just about to call Jim and get him to put some extra uniforms in the area." Grissom continued down the hallway and didn't realize Catherine was behind him until he tried to close the door to the office.

"Do you really think that he would call from where he's keeping her?" She asked, following him into the office. "He's smarter than that."

"It's not like we have anything else to go on." Grissom replied, dialling Jim's number. Catherine sighed and took a seat in one of the visitor's chairs.

"_Brass."_

"Jim, it's me."

"_Hey, I'm on my way back to the station, I just left he prison.__ The guy confessed to killing Kelly, and I think we can get him on more, too."_

"I heard. Listen, I need you to put some extra guys in the area around the Strip, from Freemont to Rainbow and Flamingo to Sahara." Grissom looked at the map Archie had printed for him.

"_Why, what's going on?"_

"Nichols just called me." Grissom revealed. "He used a pre-paid phone card, but Archie was able to pinpoint the cell tower he was closest to. I want some extra men there, keeping an eye out for him."

"_You think he's calling from his hide-out?"_ Brass wondered.

"I know it's not very likely, but we don't have anything else to go on right now." Grissom snapped before Jim had a chance to express his opinion.

"_Whoa there, I wasn't saying anything else."_ Brass defended himself. _"I'll get the guys out there within the hour."_

"Thank you." Grissom sighed, relieved that Jim hadn't argued with him. He hung up the phone and turned his attention to Catherine.

"I'm only saying that he might be trying to lead you on." She said. "He probably knows that we can trace calls, and he's trying to get us as far from where he's really hiding out as possible."

"You're probably right." Grissom admitted. "But we have to do something."

"I know." Catherine agreed. "Warrick's still waiting to hear back from some of the property records from the rest of the country. Who knows, he could have bought a place just across the border."

"We can always hope." Grissom nodded.

"And we've still got time." Catherine added. "April 9th is still more than two weeks away."

"If he sticks to his plan, yeah." Grissom noted. "He could decide to just kill her anyway."

"Somehow I don't think so." Catherine replied. "I think he's a creature of habit, he won't stray from the plan."

"God, I hope you're right." Grissom rubbed his eyes. He could feel a migraine coming.

"Why don't you go back to my place, you don't look so good." Catherine said, frowning in concern.

"Frank as always. Thank you." Grissom replied dryly.

"Oh, you know what I mean." Catherine huffed.

"Fine." He agreed grudgingly. "I have to call my doctor anyway, I forgot my migraine medicine in New York."

"And then you're going to get a few hours of sleep, OK?" Catherine gave him a stern look. "I can hold down the fort here for a while, I was going to try to track down Nichols' ex-wife."

"Good, I was going to suggest that." Grissom stood up, grabbing his jacket from the back of the chair he had just vacated. "I'll be back at six, give me a call if you need me earlier."

"Eight." Catherine replied, and Grissom frowned at her.

"Seven." He compromised.

"Fine."

xxxxx

Catherine leaned back in the chair as she waited for someone to pick up on the other end. She had finally tracked down the former Mrs. Nichols, who went by Sally Michaels these days. After her divorce from Joseph Nichols had gone through, she had quickly relocated to a small town in California, where she had gotten re-married a couple of years later. Today, she had three children and the family lived in Florida.

"_Hello?"_ A male voice came over the line.

"Hi, my name is Catherine Willows, I'm calling for a Sally Michaels, is she available?"

"_Hold on just a second."_ She could hear the man call for Sally, and a moment later a woman came to the phone.

"_Hello?"_

"Sally Michaels?" Catherine asked.

"_That's me."_ Catherine could hear the hesitation in the woman's voice.

"Were you married to Joseph Nichols fifteen years ago?"

"_Well, yes. What's this about? Who are you?"_

"I'm sorry, I should have introduced myself." Catherine apologized. "My name is Catherine Willows and I'm with the Las Vegas crime lab."

"_Oh my God, what did he do__?"_ The woman on the other end of the line half-moaned.

"What do you mean?" Catherine asked.

"_He's done something terrible, hasn't he?"_ Sally Michaels sighed. _"I was afraid of this."_

"Why were you afraid he would do something?"

"_He called me."_ Sally said. _"Started talking about someone paying for what happened to Kelly."_

"When was this?" Catherine pulled a note pad closer to her and grabbed a pen.

"_Oh, it was a while ago."_ The line went quiet for a moment as the woman tried to remember. _"Sometime last summer, July I think. Yes, it was just after the Fourth of July weekend."_

"And what exactly did he say?" Catherine scribbled down the approximate date. It had been a little over a month before Izzy Delancy had been murdered.

"_I don't remember exactly, but it was something like 'he has to pay for what happened to Kelly, for what he did'. Something like that."_

"He didn't mention any names?" Catherine pressed on.

"_No. I assumed he was talking about the man who took __Kelly."_ Sally Michaels was quiet for a moment. _"We never found out who did it, so I didn't think Joseph could do any real damage."_

"It seems he wasn't talking about the perpetrator." Catherine told her.

"_Oh God. I should have done something, talked to the police."_ The guilt was evident in the other woman's voice.

"I doubt the police would have taken you seriously." Catherine tried to comfort. "And even if they did, there's really not much they could have done."

Sally Michaels seemed to contemplate this for a moment before speaking again.

"_Who did he hurt? He hasn't killed anyone, has he?"_

"I'm sorry, I can't discuss an ongoing case." Catherine said. "I do have one more question, though."

"_I'm not sure I can help you, but I'll try."_

"Does your ex-husband own any property that you know of? Maybe outside Nevada?" Catherine knew this was a long-shot, but she had to try.

"_Not that I'm aware of, I'm sorry."_

"No, no, it's not your fault." Catherine thought for a moment. "Is there any place that was special to Joseph? Some place he used to talk to you about?" Sally Michaels was quiet for a moment.

"_Well, he always talked about buying a house in the area where he used to live with his parents."_

"In Tonopah?"

"_No, they moved from Tonopah when Joseph was just a baby. I don't remember what the town wa__s called, but it's somewhere south of Vegas. He took me there once."_

"Somewhere on route 95?" Catherine could feel her excitement rising. Finally, something to go on.

"_I think so. I'm sorry I can't be of any more help."_

"You might have helped us more than you know." Catherine told her encouragingly. "Listen, if I give you my number, could you call me if you hear from Joseph?"

"_Of course."_ Sally Michaels promised. _"But I doubt he'll call me again. Last summer was the first time I heard from him since I left Vegas fifteen years ago."_

"Still. If you hear from him." Catherine gave Sally Michaels her cell number. "I appreciate it."

xxxxx

"Hey Archie." Nick greeted as he entered the AV-lab.

"Hey, any news?" Archie asked anxiously.

"Nope, nothing." Nick sat down opposite Archie. "I heard you traced the call from Nichols to somewhere around the Strip?"

"His call went through the cell tower off the Strip, but that just means he was in the area when he made the call." Archie replied.

"I know what you mean." Nick nodded. "Unfortunately I kind of agree with Catherine on this one, I think he's going out of his way to keep us off his tail. He probably went into the city to try to throw us off."

"Probably." Archie agreed. "But I put a trace on his number, so the minute he turns the phone on, I'll be able to see where he's calling from."

"Great, that's probably the best thing we've got to go on right now." Nick sighed.

"Oh, I think I might have something better." Catherine announced, coming into the room. "I just talked to Nichols' ex-wife."

"You were able to track her down?" Nick asked, and she nodded.

"She didn't know if Nichols owns any property, but she did say that he always talked about getting a place where he lived with his parents."

"Tonopah?"

"Apparently they moved from Tonopah when he was little." Catherine revealed. "She didn't remember the name of the place, but Warrick's checking with the national registration, it shouldn't be long before we know where the Nichols relocated to."

"Right you are." Warrick joined the group. "After leaving Tonopah, the Nichols family moved to Searchlight, Nevada. Why didn't we check this information before, when we dug into Nichols' past?" He dropped a folder onto the table.

"We didn't think his childhood was all that relevant." Catherine replied. "Searchlight, that's on route 95, right?"

"Sure is." Nick confirmed.

"I was just about to go through the real estate records, see if any property has changed hands down there in the last year or so." Warrick said, heading for the door. "Just wanted to let you know."

"I'm gonna call Grissom, he'll want to know." Catherine checked her watch. "It's almost six, anyway."

"I'll give Jim a call, tell him what's going on, start rallying the troops." Nick followed Catherine out of the room.

Grissom answered his cell after the first ring.

"_Yes?"_ He sounded out of breath, like he'd run to the phone.

"Did I wake you?" Catherine asked.

"_No, I was just getting out of the shower, what's going on?"_

"Well, I talked to Nichols' ex-wife, and she told me that he used to talk about getting a place where he lived with his parents as a boy." Catherine told him. "They left Tonopah when he was little, and Warrick just talked to the national registration, and they moved to Searchlight."

"_That's not a very big place, we should get down there, see if anyone's seen anything out of the ordinary."_ He said.

"We will, Warrick's checking if any property has been sold down there in the last year, we should know something soon, and Nick's talking to Jim, he'll get some guys together."

"_I'll be at the lab in fifteen minutes."_

"Not unless you plan to break about fifty traffic laws you won't." Catherine told him. "And I think it would be a shame if you had to see Sara through bars when we find her."

"_Fine, half an hour."_

"Better." She hung up and went to find Warrick.

xxxxx

"Have we got anything yet?" Grissom asked as he rushed into the break room where the entire night shift was gathered.

"A couple of properties have been sold in the Searchlight area in the past year." Warrick told them. "One to a person under the name of Kelly Winters, with the social security number of a dead kid."

"Kelly Nichols'?" Catherine asked, and Warrick nodded.

"Well, that's it, let's go." Greg stood up, Nick following suit. Grissom, who had never sat down, headed for the door, where he almost walked into Archie.

"He's turned the phone on." Archie announced.

"Where is he?" Catherine asked.

"What difference does it make, we know where he's got Sara." Greg said in an exasperated voice, but Catherine ignored him.

"He's in Henderson." Archie told her.

"Trying to trick us again." She stated. "But why has he turned the phone on, he must have figured out that we'll have a trace on it."

The answer came as a shrill tone filled the air. Grissom pulled his cell phone from his pocket and flipped it open.

"Grissom."

"_Does it frighten you, not knowing where she is? Not knowing what I'll do to her?"_ The voice was barely a whisper.

"Nichols." Grissom breathed into the phone. The others froze around him.

"_Any closer to finding me yet? Somehow I doubt it." _

"As a matter of fact, we have not focused all our efforts on finding your hiding place." Grissom stated. He didn't think it would be a good idea to reveal that they were on their way to Nichols' hide-out.

"_When you find her body, you'll regret that."_ The words cut like a knife through Grissom, but he knew he needed to stay calm.

"Would you like to know who killed your daughter?"

The line was quiet for so long that Grissom thought Nichols had hung up.

"_You don't know who killed my Kelly."_ Nichols finally replied. _"You didn't have a clue back then, and you still don't."_

"Oh, but we do." Grissom said. "We have a taped confession." Granted, this was a white lie.

"_Tell me!"_ Nichols yelled.

"Let Sara go, and I will."

"_No, no, that's not…"_

"Then you'll never know. Is that what you want?"

"_Shut up! You don't know, you're just trying to get me to let her go. Forget it! In fact, I think the rules of the game just changed…"_ A click sounded through the phone.

"Let's go, we have to find her now." Grissom rushed down the hallway towards the parking lot. "I think he's going to kill her."

xxxxx

Nichols slammed the phone shut and threw it angrily into the backseat. That bastard! He was trying to use Kelly to get him to let his girlfriend go.

Well, he'd just have to live with the consequences.


End file.
